Get Ready for the Jeanette Rankin Elementary School River Hawks

That’s the new mascot for the soon-to-be-opened Jeanette Rankin elementary school in Lower Miller Creek.

Construction was being wrapped up on a rainy Thursday afternoon as teachers were moving all their materials and getting acquainted with their new classrooms. New principal Christina Stevens said the children will have their own opportunity to move into the new building next week.

“The kids will get the opportunity on Wednesday the 7th,” said Stevens. “We’ll come up by grade levels and tour the building. They’ll find out which doors to come in and where all their classrooms are and actually bring all the supplies from their desks and their book boxes and put them in their spots. This is going to be real for them and I’m real excited for us.”

Stevens highlighted the main difference between the old school at Cold Springs and the new Jeanette Rankin School.

“I think just the openness of this new space,” she said. “We’re just so crowded at Cold Springs. It’s an old building and there are a lot of mazes, but this is just so open and spacious with the views, so I think not being on top of each other will be amazing. And, of course, with kids it’s the new playground,” she laughed. “That’ll be the highlight.

About that new team name. Communications director Hatton Littman explains.

“We gave the community some guidance that the school name and the school mascot often reference geographic locations or important geographic markers, as well as significant people in the history of our state and our community and the school came out with two of those great markers, Jeanette Rankin and the River Hawks.”